European Political Leaders and the Social Representation of the Covid-19 Crisis

European leaders faced the Covid-19 pandemic by adopting very different leadership styles, characterized by diverging approaches to crisis communication, power management, and relationship-building with actors and stakeholders in the public sphere. The pandemic also highlighted the importance of the already-existing cleavage between populism and technocracy, positioning it at the centre of the political scene.

These complex circumstances required a multidisciplinary perspective grounded in political sociology and communication studies. To address these issues, this book analyses the communication and leadership styles of seven European leaders, grouped into 'political families'. It analyses the cases of Angela Merkel and Erna Solberg to understand if and how female leaderships differentiated from their male counterparts. It then analyses the relationship between techno-populism and professional politics by comparing the cases of Giuseppe Conte, Emmanuel Macron and Pedro Sanchez. Finally, it focuses on populist leaders Boris Johnson and Victor Orbán, who represent emblematic cases with opposite outcomes.

Flaminia Saccà is Full Professor of Political Sociology at Sapienza University of Rome, Italy; President of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 'Sociotechnics-Sociological Practice'; board member of the ESA Political Sociology Research Network; and Director of the Science, Politics and Society Lab. Her latest publications focus on female leadership and gender violence.

Donatella Selva is Assistant Professor in Sociology of Communication at the University of Florence, Italy. She works in the field of political communication, media and cultural studies. She has recently published a monograph to explore the relationship between social media, information disorders and the processes of emotionalization of the public sphere.